


Any Other Choice

by the_nerd_word



Category: Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel
Genre: Betrayal, Canon Era, Gen, Mild Gore, POV Bucky Barnes, Sad trashfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 13:45:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 880
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5499263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_nerd_word/pseuds/the_nerd_word
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The fight is nearly finished, and the Winter Soldier doesn't remember what he should. There's only one confession left.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Any Other Choice

**Author's Note:**

> I only know the very basics of what _might_ happen in Civil War, and because I'm a sucker for drama I wrote this.

_“Buck, do you remember me?”_

Captain American goes down like every other man.

There’s gasping, panting, short breaths— chest like a ruined watercolor, ruddiness in every heave for oxygen. A gash across one pectoral that’s too deep, dotted like a little “i” because there’s an ugly, garish bullet hole just above.

He is nobody, but it’s Captain America who’s on the ground. It’s Captain America, a man named Steve Rogers, a man whose blue eyes have always shown him love, who stares up at him from across the distance.

He is nobody, but his chest hurts too, and he’s not sure why. Not an injury. Not a fixable problem. He suspects it’s an internal flaw, another mental tick on the board. There’s nobody to report to, though, nobody who can turn any of this around. He’s on his own, and it’s savagely satisfying, but it’s also—

This.

It’s terrible. He wants to run.

_“Your mom’s name was Sarah.”_

It had been such an easy lie. Had rolled off his tongue like a cheap mint after he spent all that time in the museum dedicated to the Captain and the Howling Commandos. There were random facts about Rogers’ life sprinkled all around the exhibit, like jewels for eager eyes, attractive yet untouchable. Snippets of a private life made public for anyone with an ounce of curiosity.

He can still taste that lie in the back of his throat. Even past all the smells around him—all the glistening blood, the beginnings of true gore before the Final Moment. Captain America’s body is as spangled as the flag he's supposed to represent. His hair is more red than blonde. “Buck,” the once-hero (still-hero?) whispers, and it sounds like _everything_.

A warning. A plea. Hope and love and loss and despair and denial and, above all, fear.

“Buck,” Rogers says again, and he, the nobody, feels a chill down to his very core.

They called him the Winter Soldier, decades ago and more recently across some stretch of hard-to-follow time, but he has never felt colder.

Tony Stark is nearby in his suit; it glitters and weeps, wet all over with red. Parts of it are ravaged. There are others, too, different superhumans caught in the halted fray, and they look on with a wide range of expressions, witnesses to this new and despicable crux of history. But it’s Stark, the modern symbol for advancement, for responsibility under the guise of oppression, who takes attention. “It’s over, Captain,” he says, still tense, still prepared. Broken in his own way. “Just—stop.”

The nobody feels his breath catch in his throat, because Rogers is only staring at him, and that focus, that directed emotional study, is too much. It’s aimed at something he doesn’t know how to identify, and it makes him feel out of control. Helpless. The worst sort of not-human.

Steve Rogers twitches like he wants to rise, but the flesh in his left calf is dangling like quality chum, and his efforts are momentarily abandoned in the face of realization. His fear begins to really show. It’s in the paleness of his skin, the shakiness in his hands, the lines around his eyes. Steve Rogers isn’t sure of what’s about to happen.

The once-asset, the nobody, the man who is supposed to be James Buchanan Barnes, suddenly understands that the next moment is _his_. Rogers is looking at him with all that goddamn patched-up faith, and he grasps the possibilities. Fight or flight.

It’s primordial. It’s sickening.

He feels a heaviness settle in his throat. It makes his tongue thick, hinders rationality. He knows this is a fight he can’t win. Knows, too, that the trepidation in Rogers’ eyes is for the sake of a man nicknamed Bucky.

But it’s not as simple as that.

“ _You used to wear newspapers in your shoes.”_

He whispers, at first, barely passes the stunted words with his next breath. Clenches his left fist until he hears the comforting whirrs of compensating machinery. He counts—counts his own heartbeats, which are so horribly loud, counts the number of enemies he’ll have to navigate, counts the steps between himself and Steve Rogers. He counts until he’s got control again, and he finally lets go of that burdensome, awful lie.

“I don’t know you.”

After that, everything moves too fast. Rogers’ shock is a fleeting thing, a short-lived second to understanding and raw _grief_. But then the nobody, the misplaced soldier who repeated lines from a museum to get help and the smallest sense of belonging, is sprinting away.

There’s shouting behind him. Some of the superhumans are hot on his trail, and Stark is yelling for Steve Rogers to _Stand down, dammit! Don’t do this!_ He doesn’t dare look back. He tells himself that it was for the best, because at least Rogers knows the truth now. There’s not going to be another wasted smile, another friendly reference he doesn’t understand.

He tells himself it’s for the best, even when he hears, “Leave him alone!” like desperation is feeding that voice, echoed by the sound of clashing vibranium.

Tells himself it’s _done_ when he hears Captain America give one final, anguished scream before the sounds of pursuit are the only things he can hear at all.

 

 


End file.
